Letters to the best man
Chez Uhuru
228 Musgrave Road
iThekwini
To:Dr Essop Pahad
The Presidency
Union Buildings
Tshwane
Dear Dr Pahad,
It is with a sense of both accomplishment and distress that I write to inform you of my efforts to fend off the counter-revolution. As you have warned, the presidency is being subjected to unprecedented levels of offensiveness. We cannot simply take for granted the loyalty of cadres like yourself and others in the presidency for whom career planning is a priority. We must develop a new patriotism in which the presidency can feel confident that every citizen is an intelligence operative and a source of information.
I do not think it appropriate to impose on your time in establishing how best to forward information to you. It seems that what I should do is make contact with Bheki Jacobs who, according to the Sunday Times, has been working as a secret agent reporting directly to our leader for the past five years. As much as I am pleased to have learned of this prospective ally, the article is yet a further example of the irresponsible behaviour of the media in exposing the workings of the presidency and undermining our leader. How can it be in the national interest for our enemies to read in a newspaper, available on street corners and in Portuguese cafes, that our man Jacobs provided the presidency with information on the plot to overthrow our leader by Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale, and even by people we had thought trustworthy like Mosiuoa Lekota and Mohammed Valli Moosa? With Agent Jacobs’s cover now blown, important espionage in monitoring our enemies has suffered a cruel blow.
I was also alarmed to read that the analysis forwarded by Agent Jacobs of the three sub-groups building an “anti-Mbeki front” in the South African Communist Party has been made public. We must not allow his good work in identifying the threat posed by the “white left Jewish cabal”, the “Indian left cabal” and the “African left clique” to be undone. Party discipline must be enforced. I will call you to discuss our tactics but give some thought to pushing a motion through the central committee providing for expulsion of any member of the party who does not declare his or her acceptance of the free market and the sanctity of private property as the highest stage of socialism. It might be a little ambitious to require an oath of loyalty to our leader, but let’s give it a try.
As far as my own programme is concerned, I have been promoting a boycott of Nando’s. It has however, been pointed out to me that Nando’s is not what it seems and is actually controlled by Jewish interests. As it turns out, I might, by default, have struck a blow against another of the forces lined up against us. I am pleased to see that Andrew Feinstein has been moved out of the standing committee on public accounts and I feel a lot more comfortable with Ronnie Kasrils out of the Ministry of Defence. I think you might now want to give the Constitutional Court some attention.
I must disclose a deeply disturbing discovery I have made in my intelligence work. A document has come into my possession which has frightening implications for everything we have accomplished thus far. Our achievements in sustaining the miracle of simultaneously representing the masses and maintaining their dispossession stands to be placed at risk. The threat of which I speak is posed by a document entitled the Freedom Charter an insidious declaration which purports to be a popular manifesto. It says that the national wealth of our country is the heritage of all South Africans. It gets worse. It says that the mineral wealth, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole and that all other industries and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people. The document goes so far as to assert a right to decent housing and even to work! Just when you and I have begun to feel confident that the fundamentals of the economy are in place, and that there is an opportunity for some serious appropriation of the surplus, we find that subversive ideas are circulating which would leave us having to entertain inconvenient demands for redistribution.
I cannot bear to cite further from this scurrilous set of demands, the import of which is too ghastly to contemplate. More troubling is information I have received that there are some within our alliance who regard this so-called Freedom Charter as representing the policy of our government. If this view is allowed to develop momentum, how will our leader’s record withstand comparative scrutiny?
We must act swiftly to suppress this latest challenge to our freedom.
I have been too distressed in the wake of this revelation to spend time preparing to fill your shoes as Best Man. I have, however, had some useful thoughts about the wedding night. I was delighted to read that our leader will be getting his new plane and that one of the factors which swung it was that lll the current one does not have facilities for him to sleep. As a child I remember seeing Sean Connery on a water bed which had a Zebra-skin finish.
I suggest we go for one of these, a bar with Scotch dispensers and maybe some mirrors on the ceiling.
Should the affairs of state temporarily intrude, the panel of mirrors could be lowered to provide a conference table.
Obviously, with no mass uprising forseeable at this stage, our leader will not need to remain on board continuously, and, in line with government policy, it would be appropriate to raise income for the presidency by letting the aircraft out to our leader’s business allies. It is difficult to conceive of better facilities for the wedding night or for more transient engagements.
Let the honeymoon begin.
Yours in the Mile High Club
Craig Tanner